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Radar sees strange 'plasma bubbles' over the pyramids of Egypt from 5,000 miles away
Jul 10, 2025
A remote radar station on China’s Hainan Island has spotted an ionospheric disturbance hovering above the Pyramids of Giza, nearly 5,000 miles to the west.
The sighting shows how far equatorial plasma bubble tracking has come, and it hints at new ways to protect the satellites and signals that knit the modern world together.
Plasma bubbles and Chinese radar
Lead author Lianhuan Hu of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, heads the team that built the Low Latitude Long Range Ionospheric Radar, or LARID.
The phased‑array system designed by the researchers according to the study, fires high‑frequency pulses that bounce off the ionosphere, letting scientists map pockets of rarefied plasma far beyond the local horizon.
During a geomagnetic storm in November of 2024, LARID recorded a bubble over Egypt while its antennas faced west, confirming a maximum detection range of about 5,965 miles.
That span is more than three times the reach reported when the radar began test operations in early 2024, a gain achieved through software tweaks and better ionospheric modeling.
Why plasma bubbles matter
A plasma bubble is a cavern of depleted electrons that rises after sunset along Earth’s magnetic field lines, sometimes stretching hundreds of miles in diameter.
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